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Soldiering involves a multifaceted process of training designed to erode candidates' civilian values and instil a military culture. While weapons and modern equipment are essential for military strength, the importance of rituals, integral to both military training and warfare, should not be undermined. This article shares results derived from unstructured interviews and participant observation conducted over a span of seven months, from July 2015 to January 2016, with ex-soldiers from the Democratic Republic of Congo who now reside in South Africa as refugees. These soldiers have experienced these rituals firsthand. The article argues that these rituals serve as a symbolic form of mortality and pursue several objectives. In addition to offering protection to soldiers, the execution of rituals aims to enhance team cohesion and showcase soldiers' obedience and allegiance to their superiors. The symbolic death, which symbolises shedding their civilian identity to embrace military values, prepares soldiers to embody a specific form of masculinity that is highly valued within the army. Furthermore, these rituals confer powers that transform individual soldiers, prompting them to exhibit distinctive behaviour, especially in the face of the enemy. The rituals instil a sense of assurance and safety, enveloping the initiates with otherwordly might. This study, based on accounts from former soldiers, illustrates that despite being armed with sophisticated weaponry, soldiers maintain a connection to rituals that, in their beliefs, play a crucial role in the success of their military operations, particularly on the battlefield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores spatial inequality as a conceptual framework to understand the link between poor housing, environmental degradation, and mental health. The dire housing conditions are one of the many struggles that refugees face in South Africa. This paper emerged from fieldwork carried out between 2020 and 2022 among Congolese refugees in Yeoville, a suburb of Johannesburg. They were included in a research project investigating the existing association between displacement, gendered violence, and mental ill-health among internally displaced persons, refugees, and asylum seekers. The article highlights that while mental health challenges can result from various factors, poor housing adds profound psychological distress to Congolese refugees in South Africa. Drawing on 83 interviews with male and female Congolese refugees, this article highlights how precarious housing disrupts traditional, social, and cultural structures. It also weakens parents' control over their children, invades privacy, exposes women and girls to sexual violence, and contributes to the fragility of family bonds. The findings of this paper emphasize the importance of spatial inequality in examining the precarious housing conditions experienced by refugees in South Africa. These conditions, which occur in seemingly abandoned environments, have a detrimental impact on the mental health of Congolese refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the cultural context and relationship between food, health, and illness amongst Congolese forced migrants in Johannesburg, South Africa. It specifically seeks to understand Congolese migrants' perceptions of South African foods and the importance of Congolese foods in treating and preventing illnesses. Since the beginning of the political crisis in the D.R. Congo (DRC), more than eight million people were killed and thousands forced to leave their country to seek safety in foreign countries, including South Africa. Congolese who migrated to other countries experienced various ruptures which included not only the loss or separation with their relatives but also the change related to their eating patterns. The absence of traditional dishes and the consumption of food of the host country are believed to have a negative effect on their health. The significance of this study is to explore indigenous knowledge regarding food, herbal drugs and the health and wellbeing of refugees, and by so doing to promote a better understanding of their health beliefs and healing strategies. It specifically emphasises the perceptions or meanings that Congolese refugees living in South Africa have about food from the DRC and food eaten in the host country. Since food is part of identity construction, it is argued that land and the mode of production contribute to the quality of food consumed in the foreign land, which is believed by the refugees to be harmful to their bodies in South Africa. The study employs Kleinman's model on the three sectors of health care systems to analyse and understand the impact of foreign food on Congolese refugees' health in South Africa. Thematic analysis was employed to analyse and interpret data collected. Drawing on case study material based on semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with ten Congolese refugees living in Yeoville, a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa, findings reveal how Congolese refugees link their health problems to food consumed in their receiving country, believing that change in diet has led to them being weakened physically and in losing 'supernatural power' to defend themselves. More importantly, findings reveal that participants rely on their traditional food from the DRC, which they believed to be organically healthy, as a remedy to treat and prevent physical diseases. While the results of this study cannot be generalised to the entire Congolese people, they stress the importance of foodstuffs in the knowledge system of people, particularly in refugees' communities. Key words: food security, food practices, health beliefs, forced migrants, DRC, South Africa, INTRODUCTION This study explores the cultural context and relationship between food, health, and illness amongst Congolese refugees in Johannesburg, South Africa. The impact of foodstuffs on migrants' well-being has started [...]

This article explores the conceptualization of the body among former Congolese soldiers living as refugees in Johannesburg. The article draws on extensive fieldwork in Johannesburg, South Africa and employs the concept of deterritorialization and reterritorialization to explain the bodies of those who have decided to join the Congolese Army. The article reveals the complex ways in which the army manipulates soldiers' bodies to generate diverse lines of connection, coalition, and removal (or disconnection). We support that the soldiers' bodies are not necessarily owned by the country, but that soldiers' bodies become owned by military institutions, who employ nationalist rhetoric to justify their existence and actions. The act of joining the army could be considered a way of cutting ties with civilian life and joining a new world in which the individual is socialized into military culture. Through initiation, the soldier's body is reterritorialized; it becomes a national asset. While this study focuses on former Congolese soldiers, it has broader relevance, giving insight into how soldiers perceive their body shifting from individual possession to be reterritorialized as the body of the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]